When you’re mesmerized by Fowler Park’s plush suites, don’t toss out memories of spectators sliding down the undeveloped ridge behind home plate.

When you absorb Fowler Park’s symmetry, don’t discount the full circle it has completed.

Most importantly, don’t forget the diamond’s name, one that sparkles this weekend like never before.

It’s Cunningham Field, and never forget what “JC” means to USD baseball.

“He’s legendary at the university,” Ron Fowler said. “He’s the one that got it all started.”

Escondido’s John Cunningham has roamed USD since 1962, when he was named director of intramural sports and coach of two basketball teams. Two years later, he became the baseball coach, a position he held until 1998.

His accomplishments propelled him into the American Baseball Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame. But his best work came on Fowler Park’s grounds, and oh, if that dirt could talk.

In the mid-1960s, the tireless Cunningham started the process that will bring fans to Fowler Park’s splashy debut. Unearthing stories about how it became the cat’s meow of college baseball is a perfect opening for the chatty Cunningham.

It was Cunningham who flipped the acreage from being a flank of Tecolote Canyon into a baseball complex. Although “complex” is a stretch for a field that had no fences and fewer amenities, it beat traipsing around town.

USD had a clump of dirt, but it wasn’t pristine. The Toreros played games at Ocean Beach’s Robb Field, Linda Vista recreation area, Mesa College and parks in National City and El Cajon.

“That was the motivation for me to get something going on campus,” said Cunningham, 75, who still drives the Toreros’ team bus.

Cunningham is always in gear for a good tale, and his reservoir of USD baseball stories — and the sweat he put into the old digs — is unmatched.

So excuse Cunningham for thinking of the countless blisters he acquired to erect a stadium in 1977, one that later carried his name.

“I built the dugout and poured the concrete; I had never poured concrete before,” Cunningham said. “I welded stuff; I had never welded before.”

With a limited budget and unlimited chutzpah, Cunningham built a ballpark, doing so with donated materials and labor, combined with a community’s love for baseball.

Before that, the Toreros had a field, but the rattlesnakes didn’t notice. They would sun themselves in the outfield.

The stadium would come much later, and Cunningham didn’t tell the demolition crew a secret about it. The rebar for his third-base dugout was supposed to be one-eighth of an inch thick, but the castoff material Cunningham that collected was three-quarters of an inch.

But beggars can’t be picky, and Cunningham wasn’t.

“I had four city inspectors come out, and they wouldn’t give me a permit,” Cunningham said. “I said, ‘What, I built it too strong?’”